FROM THE MAGAZINE

February 2024

Spectator Editorial

The 2024 campaign cage fight

Campaigns are no longer a game of wooing voters with public debates, rallies and door knocking

By Spectator Editorial

From the Magazine

Diary

Newlywed dining around the world

Our first year of marriage has involved a lot of hosting

By Madeleine Kearns

From the Magazine

Politics

The course of the American empire

Instead of frank acknowledgment and robust action, Biden and his minders have retreated into Stalinist Newspeak

By Roger Kimball

From the Magazine

Media

Is Courier Newsroom really fighting fake news?

Journalists who have worked at Tara McGowan’s news outlet say the ideals it publicly professes are a far cry from reality

By Aidan McLaughlin

From the Magazine

Health

America is too fat for another civil war

It’s not right versus left: it’s Dunkin’ versus Krispy Kreme, battling for the soul of the country

By Bridget Phetasy

From the Magazine

Campaign 2024

The fall of Nikki Haley’s comet

How the Republican donor class blew another election

By Ben Domenech

From the Magazine

Politics

How to jail a president

Donald Trump could face prison time this year. What would that look like?

By Neal Pollack

From the Magazine

Policy

How California’s new trucking regulations threaten standards of living

The Golden State’s mandates look to be yet another case of progressive California dreaming

By Henry Olsen

From the Magazine

Politics

The populism of Machiavelli and Jefferson

In America today, our virtues and successes are our undoing, much more than our vices or failures

By Daniel McCarthy

From the Magazine

Campaign 2024

Will Covid voting rules stay in place in 2024?

As campaigns hit their stride, state voting regulations loom large, particularly in the battleground states

By Billy McMorris

From the Magazine

Internet

Against LOLflation

Online language is evolving to leave a new generation of older users behind

By Jesse Singal

From the Magazine

Campaign 2024

Inside the 2024 campaign consultant calamity

The primary season is just getting started but the consultant backbiting has already begun

By Christopher Bedford

From the Magazine

Law

How Ray Tierney brought law and order back to Suffolk County

The DA asks the questions others seem to ignore

By Amber Duke

From the Magazine

Education

Inside Oberlin College’s failed auto-da-fé

When it comes to women’s sports, former lacrosse coach Kim Russell is firmly in the camp of objective science

By Elaine Mallon

From the Magazine

Campaign 2024

How will the 2024 election impact US-China relations?

Relations between the two countries have been hot and cold for years

By Daniel DePetris

From the Magazine

Education

Ethics Man and Woman should win the game of politics

For Cicero, the debate was not so much about power as about the ethics of those seeking it

By Peter Jones

From the Magazine

Books + Arts

Book Review

The notorious feud between John Ruskin and James Whistler

The trial at Falling Rocket’s center stands for something larger than a critic’s dislike of a painting

By Oliver Soden

From the Magazine

Book Review

Relive Lou Reed’s wild, contradictory life

In Lou Reed: The King of New York, Will Hermes seems unusually well attuned to his subject, while resisting any temptation to soft-pedal

By Philip Clark

From the Magazine

Books

In praise of George Gissing, the born exile

The writer was one of the great underrated chroniclers of ’the valley of the shadow of books’

By D.J. Taylor

From the Magazine

Book Review

Cahokia Jazz is enormous fun

Francis Spufford’s latest is a gorgeously rich and multilayered story, packed with gunfire, music and superstition

By Amanda Craig

From the Magazine

Books

The peculiar American attitude toward death

Taking our mortality too seriously has been an increasing problem in our country. Thank heavens for the satirists who refuse to do so

By Amelia Butler-Gallie

From the Magazine

Music

John Densmore on protecting the Doors’ legacy

The drummer seems to have settled for the role of a wise elder statesman of rock ’n’ roll

By Christopher Sandford

From the Magazine

Film

Does Joan Crawford deserve her bad reputation?

It’s unlikely a Crawford could happen in today’s Hollywood

By Mitchell Jackson

From the Magazine

Theater

Beauty, terror and banality are uneasily juxtaposed in Harmony

During a time of monstrous persecution, there was a band dedicated to joy that consisted of Jews and Gentiles

By Clarissa Sebag-Montefiore

From the Magazine

Gaming

The frustrating promise of infinite freedom in video games

For a game to work, it has to reach a complex balance of systems and narratives

By Ross Anderson

From the Magazine

Art

How does the global art market move?

Since its launch in 2017, Convelio has become the leading technology-led art shipment company in the world

By William Newton

From the Magazine

Life

Sports

Does boxing still matter?

MMA has overtaken the sport in the public mind

By Kevin Cook

From the Magazine

Life

Drinking during pregnancy just isn’t the same

The pleasure of life before was the open horizons of drink

By Zoe Strimpel

From the Magazine

London Life

Why have parties suddenly gotten good?

Even an old grump like me has been having a good time

By Cosmo Landesman

From the Magazine

American Life

Remembering George Eastman

Two decades after the camera tycoon entered the last darkroom, Henry Clune published a thinly veiled roman-à-clef about the morose magnate

By Bill Kauffman

From the Magazine

Place

Place

The vagabond spirit of Mirleft, Morocco’s surf nook

A mile past the sleepy little town’s dusty high street lie cliffs of California proportions — with swells to match

By Adrian Brune

From the Magazine

Place

Swimming with sharks is nothing to be scared of

There is a thrill to heading out to sea searching for these magnificent creatures

By Shez Shafiq

From the Magazine

Food and Drink

Drink

The rise of English wine

The fairytale moment for English wine is here

By Kathleen Willcox

From the Magazine

Food

Ringing in the Chinese New Year with homemade dim sum

The Sichuanese are serious and methodical about flavor

By Hannah Moore

From the Magazine

Drink

New Buffalo’s Bentwood Tavern is an unapologetically tasteful beach town bar

If you’re looking for the grit and flavor of a smalltown dive, you won’t find it here

By Marc Oestreich

From the Magazine

Food

The wonder of cooking with coal

Cold grates on cold nights are grim. Warm bright ones lift the spirits, whatever tidings the day may have brought

By Timothy Jacobson

From the Magazine

Food

The possibilities of gluten and dairy-free cooking

You’ve likely made many GF/DF meals without even noticing

By Mary Kate Skehan

From the Magazine

Drink

A Champagne winter

I write at the absolute nadir of daylight

By Roger Kimball

From the Magazine

And Finally

And Finally

Groundhog Day, a break in the bleakness of winter

The sacred day is proof that, when life hands you six more weeks of winter, it can still be enjoyable

By Teresa Mull

From the Magazine

And Finally

How should you pronounce ‘mayoral’? 

No one can tell such words’ pronunciation merely from their spelling

By Dot Wordsworth

From the Magazine